[Byte Sized Podcast Ep. 61] Overpromised and Under-Deployed: The Dental Tech Buying Problem

What You’ll Learn

The Real Reason Dental Tech Fails

When dental technology fails inside a DSO, the assumption is that the product was bad. Sometimes that’s true. More often, the failure started long before anyone opened the software.

Matt McGaw spent years on the vendor side of dental sales starting in 2008. He kept hitting the same wall. The product he was selling wasn’t always what the client needed. So he left corporate sales to build DSO Compass, an independent publication focused on how dental service organizations actually select, evaluate, and implement technology.

“I just felt like there was no place anybody could go to have a clear understanding of what technology exists, how to evaluate it, where to get answers,” Matt told Adrian Lefler on a recent episode of the Byte Sized Podcast. “The evaluation part seemed really difficult and there was no source of truth.”

The source of truth matters because the market got crowded fast. A healthcare founders event Matt attends jumped from roughly 60-80 founders to about 180 in a single year. Good for innovation. Bad for evaluation.

20-30% Done at the Sale

Here’s a number that shocks most vendors. When the contract is signed, only about 20-30% of the work is complete. Maybe 40% at most.

“When I say that number, I look at founders and companies that are shocked,” Matt said. “They’re like, ‘Wait a second, no, the sale was the hard part.’ Not necessarily.”

The rest happens during implementation. Workflow changes inside practices. Training. Integration with existing systems. Troubleshooting. That takes months, and vendors that don’t staff for it rarely deliver what they promised.

This is where the vendor side falls short. Their job is to make the technology work inside these organizations. DSOs shouldn’t be held accountable for staffing specific technology deployment. They’re trying to take care of patients.

“Putting a body inside a DSO whose main job is deploying technology seems kind of ridiculous,” Matt said. “But in reality it’s really needed because on the vendor side, they don’t put enough stock in how important deployment and implementation is.”

The Sales Compensation Problem

The failure often traces back to how salespeople get paid.

Compensation models typically reward closing deals and retaining clients for a month or three. After that, the salesperson is out of the picture. They’re not compensated on whether the implementation actually succeeds six months later.

“The salesperson comes in, they make the sale, they get compensated, and they’re not considering the fact that the implementation really takes 6 months or 9 months or a year,” Adrian said.

This creates predictable problems. Reps promise features that aren’t deployed yet. They oversell capabilities. They move on to the next deal before anyone knows if the current one worked.

The vendor is to blame, but the root cause is structural. The compensation model pushes behavior that hurts implementation.

What Dental Tech Vendors Get Wrong

Matt works with vendors to fix their approach. The conversation often doesn’t go well at first.

“They don’t believe you,” he said. “They don’t believe that so much of it comes after the sale.”

Vendors from outside dentistry are the worst offenders. They don’t understand the workflows, haven’t spent time inside practices, don’t know the nuances of working with dental organizations.

But large established vendors aren’t much better. They know implementation matters. They say the right things. They’re still not very good at it.

“Maybe they’re not putting their best talent there,” Matt said. “Maybe their systems are out of whack. It’s a cost center. It’s a high cost center. It’s like, we got the transaction closed, there’s money there. Why do we want to invest more money into implementation beyond what we think is absolutely bare minimum?”

The thinking is shortsighted. A failed implementation means a churned customer, a bad reference, and wasted sales effort. But the incentives don’t line up to prevent it.

The AI Receptionist Example

AI receptionists are the clearest case of a crowded market making evaluation impossible.

“I don’t know how many people came up to me and said they had an AI receptionist business over the past two years,” Matt said. “It’s insane.”

Early on, there were five or ten companies. This past year, at least a hundred more entered the market. Maybe more.

The flood happened because building products got easier. Tools like Claude let almost anyone develop software. A founder can take an idea from concept to working prototype in hours instead of months.

“Everybody thinks they’re Steve Jobs at this point,” Matt said. “I’ve talked to single doctor owners that have built internal SaaS-type products to use inside their practices.”

The ability to build is real. The gap between building a product and taking it to market at scale is enormous. And meanwhile, practice management systems are building the same AI receptionist features directly into their platforms.

“If you’ve got an AI receptionist company, think about it,” Matt said. “Think it through. Maybe pivot.”

Good for Innovation, Bad for Evaluation

The surge of new products cuts both ways.

Innovation benefits from competition. New entrants push incumbent vendors to improve. Matt compared it to what LIV Golf did to the PGA Tour. The disruption forced changes that might not have happened otherwise.

But evaluation suffers. A DSO trying to select technology now faces dozens of options in every category. The frameworks for making those decisions often don’t exist.

“The evaluation of technology right now, even 15 years ago when I was thinking about this business, there was a lot going on then,” Matt said. “But there weren’t as many options. There weren’t as many vendors in the space.”

The problem compounds because DSOs can’t staff for it. Their job is patient care, not technology procurement. And vendors aren’t helping because they’re too focused on revenue goals to invest in proper implementation.

What to Ask Before Signing

DSOs need to push vendors hard on deployment before any contract is signed.

How exactly will you deploy this across our locations? A vague answer is a warning sign. The vendor should be able to explain which locations get piloted and why, not just accept whatever the DSO suggests.

What KPIs will we measure? Success needs to be defined before day 30, 60, or 90. If nobody agrees on what success looks like, nobody will know if you got there.

Who owns this project on both sides? There should be a named champion inside the DSO and a named owner at the vendor. Accountability matters.

What’s live today versus what’s on the roadmap? Vendors should separate current features from future promises. Hold them to the distinction.

What does success look like at the end of the pilot? If the vendor can’t answer this clearly, the pilot is likely to drift without resolution.

“Making sure that you have things you want to measure, and at the end of this pilot there’s clear understanding of what next steps look like and what success is,” Matt said. “So that once you hit that point of 60 days, 30 days, 90, you have the data in line to say, yep, it’s working, let’s move forward.”

How to Run a Pilot That Works

The Pay-to-Play Problem

The dental industry runs on pay-to-play recommendations. Vendors pay associations, publications, and consultants to be recommended. The advice is compromised before it starts.

“Everything’s pay-to-play,” Adrian said. “Send me $30,000 and you’ll be the one we recommend. That’s the way it works right now.”

Matt’s approach with DSO Compass is different. No revenue share from vendors. No paid placements.

“One of the first questions DSOs ask us is, are you getting any rev share from any of these?” Matt said. “We have zero interest in a rev-share model. We like to live with our clients inside their business because the ultimate goal is really about the dental practice and the DSO and making sure the technology works.”

The separation matters. DSO Compass publishes information and insights. Relay, the sister company, does the consulting and deployment work. Keeping them distinct allows the publication to stay objective.

“If you’re out there promising revenue dollars, that’s the wrong promise,” Matt said. “If you’re promising that you’re going to work with a customer on their processes to make sure they have the best product possible, the best onboarding implementation deployment strategy possible, the revenue will come.”

What Small Groups Should Standardize First

For smaller dental groups hoping to eventually sell to a DSO, Matt’s advice is simple: standardize the basics before anything else.

Start with the practice management system. Running different PMS software at each location is a valuation problem. Private equity buyers and DSOs look for consistent systems. A mixed environment means a lower multiple.

Then standardize VoIP. Phone systems should be the same across every location.

“A lot of the questions around that,” Matt said. “Should we standardize our PMS? Groups running different software at each office will have a harder time selling.”

These aren’t glamorous decisions. They’re the foundation that makes everything else work, including the technology deployments that come later.

In This Episode:

Matt McGaw, Founder and CEO of DSO Compass

Adrian Lefler, CEO and Co-founder of My Social Practice

Adrian Lefler, CEO of My Social Practice, is a seasoned expert in the dental marketing industry with 14 years of experience. He is widely recognized for his engaging and informative presentations. Based in Suncrest, Utah, Adrian shares his life with his wife, four children, and a lively mix of pets. My Social Practice is a leading dental marketing company, and Adrian is passionate about helping dental professionals succeed in this dynamic field.